Protesters blocked major roads in Argentina on Wednesday in demonstrations calling for the release of a detained civil rights group leader.
Traffic chaos broke out when the main roads into the capital Buenos Aires were blocked by vehicles in support of the leftist campaigner Milagro Salas.
Police diverted traffic around the roadblocks. They did not intervene to disperse the protesters.
Demonstrators mounted similar blockades on other roads around the country.
Salas, the 51-year-old leader of the Tupac Amaru indigenous rights movement, was jailed in January on public disorder charges over a street demonstration in her northern province of Jujuy.
Her political opponents allied to Argentina's new conservative government later brought further charges of drug-trafficking and of fraud related to her campaign's social welfare projects.
Salas is a member of the parliamentary assembly of the regional political bloc Mercosur which unites several South American countries. Her supporters say that makes her exempt from prosecution.
Deputies from that assembly on Wednesday filed a complaint against the prosecutor and judge handling Salas's case, branding her detention "illegitimate and unconstitutional."
Her supporters have also referred the case to the Interamerican Human Rights Commission.
Pope Francis, currently on a visit to Mexico, sent Salas a rosary as a gesture of support, a church official said on Monday.
Demonstrators have been camped out for several weeks near the presidential palace in Buenos Aires calling for Salas's release.
Protesters blocked major roads in Argentina on Wednesday in demonstrations calling for the release of a detained civil rights group leader.
Traffic chaos broke out when the main roads into the capital Buenos Aires were blocked by vehicles in support of the leftist campaigner Milagro Salas.
Police diverted traffic around the roadblocks. They did not intervene to disperse the protesters.
Demonstrators mounted similar blockades on other roads around the country.
Salas, the 51-year-old leader of the Tupac Amaru indigenous rights movement, was jailed in January on public disorder charges over a street demonstration in her northern province of Jujuy.
Her political opponents allied to Argentina’s new conservative government later brought further charges of drug-trafficking and of fraud related to her campaign’s social welfare projects.
Salas is a member of the parliamentary assembly of the regional political bloc Mercosur which unites several South American countries. Her supporters say that makes her exempt from prosecution.
Deputies from that assembly on Wednesday filed a complaint against the prosecutor and judge handling Salas’s case, branding her detention “illegitimate and unconstitutional.”
Her supporters have also referred the case to the Interamerican Human Rights Commission.
Pope Francis, currently on a visit to Mexico, sent Salas a rosary as a gesture of support, a church official said on Monday.
Demonstrators have been camped out for several weeks near the presidential palace in Buenos Aires calling for Salas’s release.
